Electronic commerce has improved the marketplace in many ways. Some of the improvements include providing access to remote geographic locations, reducing costs associated with real estate and personnel, eliminating travel expenses, better targeting of advertisements and marketing, better provision of relevant price and quality information, and 24-hour/day availability. These improvements are so profound that they have caused vendors and customers, who would otherwise have lacked market access, to enter the marketplace.
Unfortunately, electronic commerce has an innate contradiction that is difficult to resolve. Easier access to goods and services poses significant security risks. Hacking, credit card fraud, and identity theft are potent threats in an electronic commerce environment. Methods of remedying those security threats involve impinging on the very flexibility and ease that make electronic commerce so practical.
A particular technical challenge with electronic commerce relates to orchestrating consent requirements. Often before various transaction may occur, such as a financial center customer opening a deposit or credit card account, various consents must be obtained. Similarly, regulations often require that a follow up conversation may not occur unless the customer provides consent to receive such a follow up conversation. Typically, consents are not reliably captured either in writing or digitally. This means that each transaction process requires repeatedly asking for the same consent information over and over again.
As a result, there is clear utility in and benefit from, novel methods and apparatuses for balancing security risks and orchestrating consent requirements with transactional flexibility and ease.
For the purposes of this disclosure, like reference numerals in the figures shall refer to like features unless otherwise indicated. The drawings are only an exemplification of the principles of the invention and are not intended to limit the invention to the particular embodiments illustrated.